Saturday, August 11, 2018

When Vanessa and Nick Lachey co-host the 2018 Miss USA Competition on Monday, the couple may get a bit sentimental.

“We first met judging Miss Teen USA in early 2003,” says Nick, a member of 98 Degrees. Adds Vanessa, “I was heading to New York to host TRL and he was like, ‘I’ve been on that show with my band.’ Who knew we’d end up getting married!”

For Vanessa, who won the title of Miss Teen USA in 1998, the event is even more personal. “When I was 17 and won, that was the moment my life changed,” she says. “It gave me confidence to have my own voice and follow my true self. It was such an empowering thing.”

“Now I’m excited for the next generation!” she says. “And I’m honored that I get to stand on the stage with my husband who has supported me as a woman, as a mother and as me.”

After meeting 15 years ago, the pair began dating in 2006 and married in 2011. At home, they are busy with their three kids: Camden, 5, Brooklyn, 3, and Phoenix, 16 months.

“We try to balance,” says Vanessa. “One day I might be going to the grocery store and I’ll bring Brooklyn and it turns into mommy-daughter time.”

Says Nick: “Now that Camden is in t-ball, there’s no way I’m letting Vanessa have that one. We have games on Saturday, practice on Sunday. It’s really fun that he’s getting into sports because we can bond over it. I like to be a part of it as much as the coach will let me! It’s fun to see him getting better. As your kids get older, they start to find their passions.”

Still, the couple makes it a point to have the occasional date night. “It’s more important now than ever,” says Nick. “The kids are so much a priority, but we need to carve out that one-on-one time.”

The 2018 Miss USA Competition, which takes place at the Hirsch Memorial Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana, airs Monday, May 21 at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

SOURCERUTH KINANE
'Ladies from all 50 states (and the District of Columbia!) descend on Louisiana Monday foran epic bachelorette partywith their best smiles, gowns, and interview answers to compete for the Miss USA crown (and sash!).

Ahead of the big event, EW caught up with this year’s hosts and husband/wife Nick and Vanessa Lachey to find out what the competition has in store for the contestants and to, inadvertently, make them feel nervous about the hosting gig.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are you nervous to work together? Excited? How are you feeling going into this?VANESSA LACHEY: Nick and I have been talking for years about working together and it excites us and then it makes us nervous and then it excites us again. Then we think, “Do we want to be working together and living together?” But this year we’ve been talking a lot about working together and coming up with ways we could do that and this actually came about because someone was talking to me about it being the 20th anniversary of me winning Miss Teen USA in 1998 and I had to swallow and ask, “Oh my gosh, am I the old lady now? Twenty years ago?!” So then it just came together.We love hosting, we wanted to do something together and this pageant is near and dear to my heart. I believe everything professionally and emotionally good in my life has single-handedly come from this event. I even met Nick judging aMiss Teen USA in Palm Springs.Nick Lachey: Yeah, that was the first time we ever, ever met each other, like, shake your hand ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’

So talk me through the competition. What’s required from each girl?VANESSA: It’s three parts: evening gowns, bathing suits, and interview. Overall, everyone is equally weighed because they want to know about your health and your life and your physical fitness—it’s not about who has the best six-pack, it’s about how you’re carrying yourself, how you live your life in a healthy manner, and then there’s the interview portion. This woman’s going to go out and represent the country when she goes on to compete for Miss Universe so they want to make sure that she can handle herself in an interview segment and throw some questions and see how she handles politics, see how she handles life and love and see how she handles anything. Then there’s evening gowns because she’s Miss USA and there is just this really beautiful old school gracefulness that comes with this title and to be able to walk into a room and make everyone stop and turn their head, whether it’s the confidence you’re giving off or whether it’s the quirkiness of your smile, or the warmness in your eyes, they want to know that’s the girl who’s going to represent us. So all three of those factors define the next Miss USA and I’m just super glad I’m not judging.

Vanessa, how was your experience competing in the teen version of the pageant?VANESS: I won 20 years ago and I don’t say this in a self-depreciating, confident way but I was not the prettiest girl on stage and I did not have the best dress. My parents made me feel beautiful for who I was, not how I looked. When I won I later asked the judges, “What was it?” And they said, “You acted like you were 17. You were just a fun, quirky 17 year old. You weren’t trying to be somebody you weren’t or answer the questions the way you thought the judges wanted them to be answered. You acted like you were 17 and that’s what we want, Miss Teen USA.” So I won by being me and not what I thought everyone wanted me to be, and it really gave me that full confidence boost that I needed for the rest of my life.NICK: Authentic always shines through and that’s important for all these ladies to remember. Be yourself and be proud of who that is and go out there and show the world what you’re all about.

What’s cool about the competition this year is that it’s very diverse. Apart from being from all over the country, they’re all from different backgrounds and there’s some variation in ethnicities.NICK: Diversity makes our country special and this is a chance to celebrate that. We have people from every other walk of life and it’s exciting for them to have a platform to show the world who they are and what they’re passionate about and do that proudly to represent where they come from.

Do you guys have to announce the winner at the end? And do you have any fears about it considering Steve Harvey’s faux pas?NICK: I’m going to make Vanessa do it! My eyes are starting to go; there’s no telling what I’ll read.VANESSA: Well, now I’m nervous. Thanks a lot!

“The songs just put you in a great spirit and I think the audience feels the same way,” Lachey, 44, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It’s why we love to do stuff like this around the holidays. It just puts us in a great spirit and gets you ready for a very special time of year.”

Lachey, his brother Drew, Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre toured last year during the holiday months in support of their second Christmas album, Let It Snow. They’ll perform songs from the new Yuletide collection this time around, along with classic 98 Degrees favorites.

Lachey’s top Christmas tunes? “Let It Snow,” “O Holy Night,” and especially, “Mary Did You Know.”

“It’s always been one of my favorites, which is why I campaigned to have it on there,” he says, referring to their latest Christmas album. “There’s so many good ones. What was fun about doing a tour like that [last year] is I thought I’d be kind of sick of Christmas before I got to Christmas, but I never found myself feeling that way.”

That’s especially beneficial, since the singer’s wife Vanessa kicks off the holiday season before Halloween comes around. “Vanessa will literally put on holiday music starting early October,” Lachey admits. “We’ve listened to literally everything that’s possibly released during a holiday season by the time it’s all said and done, but she gives a slight edge to Nick Lachey and 98 Degrees’ music.”

A fellow musician also helped the dad of Camden, 5, Brooklyn, 3, and Phoenix, 16 months, embrace the merry and bright all year round.

“We toured with Ryan Cabrera a couple years ago and he was in his dressing room in the middle of summer listening to Christmas music,” Lachey recalls. “I’m like, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ He’s like, ‘Man, it just puts me in a good mood. It’s just feel good music. Why wait until after Thanksgiving? Let’s get it started earlier and be in that good frame of mind for a little longer.’ ”

Between shows on the 36-date tour, Lachey — who will perform with 98 Degrees on Monday’s Miss USA competition — looks forward to decorating the house and taking the kids to see Santa Claus

“The picture with Santa is always a fiasco,” the former Dancing With the Stars contestant says. “Which kid’s gonna scream their face off and which kid is going to smile? It’s almost disappointing if all three kids are smiling quietly, patiently sitting on Santa’s lap. You want at least one of them to kind of lose their mind. That’s become a fun little tradition.”

We’ve only done one of these so we haven’t really established traditions yet,” Lachey says, “but hopefully 10 years from now after we’ve done 10 in a row, we’ll have good traditions to report.”

Cincinnati Reds second baseman and National League Player of the Month Scooter Gennett has been making the media rounds, and during an appearance Thursday on The Dan Patrick Show, he joked with the Mason High School graduate about just how excited his wife was to meet and get a picture with celebrity Cincinnati sports fan Nick Lachey at a Reds-Dodgers game in Los Angeles.

Gennett talked about how he "had to hear about it for like hours after the game" and that she was - "God's honest truth, for sure" - more excited about the Lachey encounter than she was when her husband became the first Red and 17th player in Major League Baseball history to hit four home runs in a game.

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